I also wanted to share some news articles from signonsandiego.com about advances they are making in border control.
53-foot Tunnel Equipped with Lights
U.S. law enforcement agents investigating an incomplete cross-border tunnel west of the San Ysidro border crossing report that they have found a 53-foot passageway shored up with plywood and equipped with battery-powered lights.
The unearthed stretch was reached Thursday by officers from the Border Patrol and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said Lauren Mack, an ICE spokeswoman in San Diego. The tunnel is east of Smugglers Gulch.
The tunnel's builders entered through a manhole near the border fence in Mexico and crawled through 700 feet of sewer drain, on both sides of the border, Mack said.
The U.S. agents found an exit to the tunnel covered with an old sofa cushion within the compound of the South Bay International Wastewater Treatment Plant.
Law enforcement officials believe the tunnel was being built to smuggle humans and drugs.
http://www3.signonsandiego.com/stories/2009/jul/02/bn02tunnel-53-feet/?tijuana&zIndex=126139Officials Celebrate Patching of Notorious Gap in Border
An estimated 1.5‚million cubic yards of earth fill most of the canyon known as Smuggler's Gulch near the international border. A secondary fence of steel mesh lines the berm. (John R. McCutchen / Union-Tribune) - After years of legal wrangling and tens of millions of dollars spent, federal officials gathered yesterday to celebrate the completion of a costly and controversial stretch of border fence.
Border Patrol officials held a ribbon-cutting ceremony atop an earthen berm spanning a canyon near the Pacific Ocean known as Smuggler's Gulch, at one time a steep area that was considered dangerous to patrol.
The construction project, begun last year and completed at the end of May,
required contractors to move roughly 1.5 million cubic yards of earth from surrounding hillsides, essentially filling in part of the canyon. A secondary fence of steel mesh now spans the canyon atop the berm, flanked by paved roads. An older fence sits to the south on the canyon floor.
Two decades ago, when the first fence was built, the area was rife with human- and drug-smuggling. Border enforcement efforts in the mid-1990s prompted a steep decline in arrests within the Border Patrol's San Diego sector, as smugglers moved east. However, proponents continued to push for the fence in part because it would make the area easier to patrol.
“It still took a huge number of Border Patrol,” said retired congressman Duncan L. Hunter, a longtime proponent of the fence who cut the ribbon yesterday. “The fence allows you to man the border with fewer people.”
Joshua Gough, the agent in charge of the agency's Imperial Beach station, said it would typically require five agents to oversee the canyon, where now “around 1.5” will suffice. He said that before construction began there were about 35 illegal entry attempts a month in the area, but the number has dropped significantly.
The Smuggler's Gulch contract was awarded to Omaha, Neb.-based Kiewit Corp. for $48.6 million. It was part of a $59 million contract to complete about 3½ miles of secondary fence across the canyon, in nearby Border Field State Park and in surrounding areas, according to the Border Patrol.
A 700-foot stretch of fence west of the gulch has yet to be completed, in part because the agency has encountered obstacles to building in an area known as Bunker Hill, where historic World War II-era military bunkers are located.
The gulch project met with stiff opposition. In February 2004, a lawsuit was filed against the federal government by environmental organizations, including the Sierra Club and the San Diego Audubon Society, with plaintiffs arguing there would be sediment damage to the Tijuana River Estuary.
In 2005, Congress passed legislation enabling the Department of Homeland Security to waive all laws standing in the way of building the fence. The environmental lawsuit was dismissed in December of that year.
Criticism of the project has continued, especially after a storm last fall that produced about 1.14 inches of rain flooded the river valley, leaving what some farmers and ranchers said was an unusual amount of mud.
“I think that what people experienced during that rain event was a direct consequence of the lack of best management practices,” said Oscar Romo, a UCSD researcher who coordinates the Tijuana River National Estuarine Research Reserve's coastal training program.
Yesterday, Kiewit area manager Mike Lowe said there had been erosion during the storm, but that “it was a hundred-year storm event an act of God.”
The berm has been installed with erosion-control measures including straw bales, Lowe said, and has been seeded with native grasses.
Ok, that's it for now - consider yourself informed!!
